11.09.18

Michael Lewis’s book “The New New Thing” was published the same week as I moved to Silicon Valley in October 1999 and provided a great tour through the landscape at the high point of the Dotcom Bubble, just as his Liar’s Poker was a signature story of the 1980s Wall Street boom. Unfortunately we don’t have anything quite the same about New Space, although Tim Fernholz’s book comes close.

However, just as it was obvious back in 1999 quite how untethered Silicon Valley had become from real world business models, the New New Space industry seems intent on demonstrating the same about the space sector. In recent months I’ve heard about numerous planned nano-satellite constellations that are struggling to raise funding (beyond their $10M or so in proof of concept venture capital) and may run out of money soon, because they simply don’t have a credible business plan.

Looking elsewhere, it seems that 5G IoT and “Armani WiFi” are not really such convincing buzzwords after all (sorry Charlie and Jay), and Ligado’s lobbyists can’t outwit Brad Parkinson’s “fervent ally” in the White House, so some if not all of those multi-billion dollar investments will soon prove to be a complete debacle as well.

But the poster child for the bursting of the bubble can be seen in SpaceX’s increasing frantic attempts to raise money in the face of a rapid decline in launch demand, and increasing competition from Blue Origin, which doesn’t need to make a profit. Firing your bankers because they are nervous about how much additional debt you will take on in the future is a bad sign, and redesigning your constellation to hide its problems seems even more bizarre.

SpaceX’s launch tempo is already falling, with 10 launches now scheduled for the second half of 2018 compared to 12 in the first half, far short of the 50% increase in 2018 launches and medium term 30-40 launches per year that the company predicted only a year ago. So its an open question what the core business is worth, but with $270M in LTM adjusted EBITDA (which counts deposits and excludes some R&D) and a declining revenue outlook for 2019, the valuation of $28B achieved this spring is clearly ludicrous.

SpaceX’s attempts to find new sources of revenue are also proving deeply problematic because the broadband satellite constellation business now appears to be in even more dire straits than the launch business. Recently rumors have circulated that SoftBank is looking to exit from OneWeb (before the next tranche of its $1B equity commitment is due after the test satellites are launched in early 2019), as the system costs increase and questions abound over the size of the market opportunity for satellite broadband. Certainly Masa Son’s attitude to the project appears to have changed dramatically in the last year, from touting satellite as an alternative to fiber, to not even mentioning satellite in a recent lengthy feature on the Vision Fund.

And finally, given the lack of demand for launch services, the need for the BFR now seems highly questionable, except as a vehicle for space tourism. Since SpaceX is likely to have investment needs of $1B+ per year just for BFR and the debt capacity of the company is unlikely to be more than about $2B, it therefore wouldn’t be in the least surprising if the company’s next step in 2019 is to start taking more deposits from potential tourists who want to emulate Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa. In the meantime, soliciting contracts from anyone who might offer a cash deposit seems like another avenue SpaceX will be exploring.

Looking back once again to 1999, it seems quite relevant to note that the first major meltdown (the Iridium bankruptcy) came in August 1999, well before the bursting of the wider tech bubble. And it now appears that there are several multi-billion dollar satellite projects that could suffer the same fate within the next year. What will that mean for investor perceptions? Will incumbents benefit? And which elements of this new technology will prove to be useful in the long run?

And subsequently, SpaceX has been positioning itself to play a role in DARPA’s Blackjack satellite constellation program, which will provide total funding of up to $117.5M to be split between several bidders. Notably, SpaceX filed a new experimental application with the FCC in August 2018 “to reflect additional test activities undertaken with the federal government” and add “two new types of earth stations, one of which will transmit uplink signals to the Microsat satellites first from the ground and later from a moving aircraft”. In that application, SpaceX told the FCC that:

“These experimental engineering verification vehicles are currently engaged in the test regimen as authorized, in order to enable the company to assess the satellite bus and related subsystems, as well as the operation of space-based and ground-based phased array technologies.”

As he looks to secure both DARPA funding (which should be announced in the next couple of weeks) and FCC approval of the new experimental license application, Elon Musk is certainly extraordinarily sensitive to any suggestion that there might be a problem with Starlink. Notably, within a few hours after my previous blog post appeared on September 18, it seems he planted a (rather bizarre) question on Twitter so that he could state that “Starlink should be active by then [2023]“. Indeed, he was so keen to get this assertion out there that the same question was posted twice.

But the reality is that the Starlink satellites have not performed in accordance with the plan that SpaceX presented to the FCC as recently as February 1, 2018, when Patricia Cooper told the FCC that:

“As set out in the original application, after system checkouts are performed and the system is evaluated as ready to proceed, SpaceX will engage in orbit-raising maneuvers until the spacecraft reach a circular orbit at an altitude of 1,125km.”

“After system checkouts are performed and the system is evaluated as ready to proceed, the orbit-raising phase of the mission will commence. This segment will last approximately half a year depending on system performance.”

But what has actually happened? Both satellites have remained around the launch altitude of 514km, with TinTin A not showing any meaningful evidence of propulsion since at least early March, and TinTin B not experiencing any significant change in altitude after attempting a few orbital maneuvers. So it seems all but certain that there has been a major issue with the propulsion system onboard both of the Starlink satellites.

When confronted with the rumors of a satellite failure by SpaceIntelReport, SpaceX stated that the satellites “were delivered to their intended orbit, communicated with ground stations, continue to communicate with ground stations, and remain in operation today.” That may all be true, but says nothing about whether the propulsion system has failed.

Unsurprisingly such a failure would put SpaceX in a very awkward position, when there were already many questions about whether Starlink would go forward, not least because the satellites may not reach the correct orbit to bring SpaceX’s ITU filing into use, and the FCC’s experimental authorization was based on the assumption that mission operations would be conducted at 1125km. And if SpaceX cannot build satellites with a reliable propulsion system, that would reinforce concerns expressed by FCC Commissioner Rosenworcel in SpaceX’s license grant that “the FCC has to tackle the growing challenge posed by orbital debris.”

09.18.18

Yes I know it’s only 384,000 km to the Moon, but just like Elon, I decided to round up. After all, it’s apparently “better karma”!

Last night’s SpaceX event raised a lot of questions for many observers, not least because it “caught some SpaceX employees off guard” and was rushed out so fast that some of the promotional imagery was incorrect. However, I suspect that the reason for this surprise announcement was to distract from impending bad news about the Starlink project, namely that the project has for all intents and purposes been put on hold.

We already knew that there was a significant reduction in hiring in early July, but I’m told the cutbacks went much deeper, with a significant fraction of the Starlink team departing. SpaceX was also looking to develop a more concrete business plan for the project in Q2, but I believe it proved impossible to come up with anything remotely close to the ludicrous forecasts from 2016 reported by the Wall St Journal that suggested the project would have over 40M subscribers and $30B in annual revenues by 2025.

Ironically enough, the principal mention of Starlink last night was as a source of funding for the BFR development. It makes no sense whatsoever to think that Starlink will generate profits to fund a $5B+ BFR development between now and 2023, so the only logical conclusion is that money raised for Starlink will now be diverted to the BFR. Another hint that Starlink is going away was the statement that BFR is expected to consume the majority of engineering resources after the commercial crew development has been completed for NASA next year, despite Starlink supposedly costing more to develop than BFR ($10B+ compared to ~$5B) over the next 5 years.

It’s only natural that SpaceX would look for a replacement market that can be projected to generate billions of dollars of profitable revenue, and the company now appears to have settled on space tourism, as previewed by Gwynne Shotwell last week, when she suggested that it “will probably be the majority of our business in the future, flying people” with “7 billion potential payloads“.

However, the critical question is whether investors will remain sanguine about such a dramatic transformation in where over 80% of SpaceX’s future revenues are supposed to come from. Do investors that thought they were investing in the future of connectivity, really want to invest in taking rich people to space? And does the checkered track record of space tourism give them confidence that Elon’s promises will actually be realized, especially as it will take 5+ years and $5B+ of additional investment (even by Elon’s optimistic estimates) before the BFR is ready to transport passengers to the Moon?

05.22.18

It took a while, but it seems that in April investors in Intelsat finally noticed my January blog post, and started to believe in the potential for a windfall from C-band monetization, causing the share price to jump from well under $5 to over $14 now. That’s brought out a lot of newskeptics, who are highlighting differences in both the share price performance and results call commentary at Intelsat and SES.

Some even appear to believe that SES is opposed to ever monetizing more than 100MHz of spectrum, when in fact Intelsat and SES have jointly conveyed the opposite message to the FCC, stating in April:

“For these reasons, Intelsat and SES have proposed an amount of spectrum clearing – 100 MHz available for terrestrial mobile use plus additional transition band spectrum needed to ensure that 5G operations are compatible with ongoing Fixed Satellite Service (“FSS”) to customers in the uncleared spectrum – that they believe can reasonably be accomplished within 18-36 months following a final Commission order. The Parties stated that if the terrestrial demand for mid-band spectrum is as robust as claimed, their market-based approach could result in additional spectrum being cleared in the future – but in a manner and timeframe that protects Intelsat’s and SES’s customers and their businesses.”

So it’s hard to understand why people would see Commissioner O’Rielly’s remarks that “To make this worthwhile, an adequate amount of spectrum – at least 200 or 300 megahertz to start – needs to be made available in this band” as a sign of opposition to a private transaction. That’s especially true when he also said that “This method provides an attractive option that should be thoroughly considered, particularly because of the speed in which it could bring the spectrum to market” and it aligns perfectly with Republican ideals, as described in Tom Hazlett’s book “The Political Spectrum”, that the FCC should allow market forces to reallocate spectrum to the highest and best use.

Certainly there are concerns about the pace of reallocation, given the complexity of moving current users around, and ultimately unwinding the substantial cross-subsidies from large to small cable companies that are inherent in the way distribution of content via satellite is paid for today. However, an outcome along the lines of “sell 100MHz now, then another 200MHz+ within 5 years” (with the option to clear the remainder within say 10 years), is certainly plausible.

At that point any complaints from satellite operators about being forced to clear too much spectrum would be reminiscent of Brer Rabbit saying to Brer Fox “please don’t throw me into the briar patch” because even skeptics like FT Alphaville indicate that the C-band spectrum should be worth more than the ~$0.13/MHzPOP paid in the recent UK spectrum auction (£1164M for 200MHz of spectrum from 3400-3600MHz), putting a valuation in excess of $20B on the entire 500MHz spectrum band.

Another concern expressed by skeptics is that any proceeds would take years to be realized, which is hard to comprehend for the first 100MHz of spectrum (worth $4B+ according to the FT’s assumption), since as in all spectrum sales, the buyer pays upfront and only then is the spectrum cleared. Indeed, if Intelsat and SES were to accept a pre-emptive offer for this initial slice of spectrum (as suggested in my January blog post), a deal could be even in hand at the time that a final FCC order is issued, rather than a process being run after the order is approved. Assuming the initial NPRM is issued soon (plausibly at the July FCC open meeting), that could advance the timing of receipts to the middle of 2019 rather than the very end of 2019 or more likely some time in 2020.

One remaining question raised above relates to the divergent performance of Intelsat and SES’s share price in recent months. But I think this is easily explained by investors believing that SES might well re-invest any windfall into more O3b satellites (where the ultimate return on capital is far from certain), while Intelsat will pay off its debts, stop spending money on new satellites, and return capital to shareholders.

Indeed if you believe that the future of large parts of the FSS industry could look a lot like the dial-up internet business in the mid-2000s, the best bet for Intelsat might then be to sell off its Ku-band data satellites to OneWeb and run the company purely to generate cash from running its legacy satellites and from monetizing its spectrum over time.

So despite me being one of the most skeptical people around on the ability of DISH, Ligado or Globalstar to realize a windfall from their spectrum holdings, I simply don’t understand why investors who apparently don’t know much about spectrum issues think now is a good time to be shorting Intelsat. In early 2017, I didn’t believe that Straight Path would find a buyer that was desperate to establish a leadership position in 5G spectrum in the shape of Verizon, let alone draw AT&T into a bidding war (not least because much more mmWave spectrum will be auctioned in the future). Though at least I wasn’t alone, because even Straight Path’s management was left in disbelief about the result.

But with that as the example, and the C-band now representing the most obvious (and perhaps only) opportunity to acquire a very large block of spectrum for high power mobile use, with much better propagation characteristics than mmWave spectrum and at a fraction of the price of DISH, Ligado or Globalstar’s spectrum, I think it would be foolish to assume that a Straight Path-like outcome won’t happen again.

01.29.18

Before yesterday’s Axios article suggesting that President Trump’s National Security Council has set its sights on using the 3.7-4.2GHz satellite C-band downlink spectrum for a national 5G network, it was clear that analysts were underestimating the importance of this spectrum band for the US wireless industry. For example, Morgan Stanley’s January 17 downgrade of DISH Network identified Verizon as the “only suitor” for DISH’s spectrum but only suggested the CBRS auction as an alternative option for Verizon to acquire more spectrum.

It seems few people have read the reply comments filed by wireless operators in the FCC’s mid-band spectrum proceeding last November, where Verizon suggested there should be a a near term NPRM with market-based clearance mechanisms, rather than FCC-run auctions for this band. In contrast, AT&T asked for “substantial record development, including additional analysis and modeling” before the FCC moves forward with an NPRM, and T-Mobile said the FCC should reject Intelsat’s proposal and instead take control of the auction process, with a defined post-auction band plan and payments to incumbents from the auction proceeds, part of which would fund the clearance of existing users.

A logical conclusion is that Verizon believes it could be the sole player to acquire spectrum rights in this band (to supplement its 5G mmWave buildout plans) via a deal with Intelsat, while AT&T has relatively little interest due to its focus on the 700MHz FirstNet buildout and securing additional mmWave spectrum allocations, and T-Mobile is trying to ensure that Verizon is unable to monopolize this spectrum band by asking for a more open auction process.

One important consideration is that the power restrictions that will apply to the CBRS band to permit spectrum sharing may not be necessary above 3.7GHz and therefore with MIMO this band could be deployed for urban coverage on approximately the same cell grid used for PCS and AWS spectrum, as Qualcomm and Nokia have indicated, and as is planned in Europe, where the 3.4-3.8GHz band is being auctioned.

Since the reply comments were filed, Intelsat has continued to push hard for a near-term NPRM and given the difficulties that the FCC would encounter in defining how a “market-based” transaction should occur, it is entirely plausible that an exclusive spectrum deal between Intelsat and Verizon could be struck shortly after a draft NPRM was issued. By selling say 100MHz of spectrum to Verizon, Intelsat would establish a benchmark valuation for its C-band spectrum assets, while being able to maintain existing video distribution services within the remaining 400MHz of spectrum. Of course, Verizon would also presumably be happy to see Charlie Ergen left at the altar without his “only suitor”.

The Trump NSC memo only serves to increase the pressure to execute such a transaction, and pre-empt any (still remote) possibility of the spectrum being “nationalized”. Verizon could certainly promise to build a 5G network using this spectrum within 3 years, without government intervention, and gain an even more concrete lead in 5G network superiority. Meanwhile Intelsat (and other satellite operators including SES) could keep providing their existing C-band video distribution services and receive billions in cash plus additional billions in attributed spectrum value for the remaining 400MHz of spectrum, and the FCC could achieve a pioneering market-based transfer of spectrum to higher value uses. What’s not to like about that deal (unless you are AT&T, T-Mobile or DISH)?

In fact, ironically enough, the current outcry has made it easier for the new disclosure-based regime to operate effectively: consumer advocates will be watching out for perceived violations of net neutrality principles and if they can drum up sufficient outrage about unfairness or antitrust violations, then the FTC will be forced to take action. However, its hard to see technical violations which (at least in the short term) benefit consumers, such as zero rating or content bundling, prompting much of an outcry. And even supporters of net neutrality agree that the big tech companies are likely to benefit from the new rules.

But what I find interesting here is the long political game. Its amusing to see net neutrality proponents accusing Pai of being a shill for Verizon and the cable companies. While many past FCC commissioners have simply gone through the revolving door to make millions in the industry, Chairman Pai has the talent and ambition to achieve much bigger goals.

Given how easy it will be to portray net neutrality opponents as “fake news”, Pai has a clear political platform to run on and it wouldn’t be in the least bit surprising to me to see him ultimately figuring as part of the Presidential or Vice Presidential race in 2028 or 2032. In that context its intriguing to consider what other hot button political issues might come within the overall ambit of the FCC. One area is freeing up spectrum, where there are possibilities for a big bipartisan win with the satellite C-band downlink.

However, an even bigger issue (as highlighted in my last post) is that Pai has already shifted to raising questions about whether you can you trust Silicon Valley companies, such as Google, Facebook and Twitter. And as noted above, many people think these companies are likely to get even stronger after the abolition of net neutrality rules. So a winning populist theme in the latter part of this administration could well be to threaten to cut these companies down to size, potentially with the helpful side effect of limiting their influence (which next time around will more likely reflect these companies’ preference for Democrats) in the 2020 election.

As a result, I think Silicon Valley now has to be concerned not just about losing the favors it has been granted on a regular basis for the last 20 years, but a rising hostility within government to the big tech companies and their role both in the economy and in political dialog.

Perhaps it is true that the best answer would have been to push harder on unbundling local loops to facilitate service-based competition on telco networks, just as in Europe, but that ship sailed 15 years ago when the CLECs went bankrupt. Instead, going all the way back to the 1996 Telecom Act, the US has focused on infrastructure-based competition between cable and telcos, which unsurprisingly hasn’t produced the same level of competition, due to the cost of maintaining multiple access networks.

Maybe this is a failed model and we now have to be content with regulating the current oligopoly of cable and telcos to ensure they don’t behave badly (and we can certainly debate exactly how much regulation is needed to achieve that). But perhaps wireless broadband will provide some level of new competition for fixed providers. I dismissed that possibility 6 years ago, but now I’m increasingly convinced that the enormous efficiency gains coming from MIMO will provide wireless operators with more capacity than they know what to do with, enabling them to deliver wireless broadband in the home to at least some (meaningful) number of consumers.

Whether that’s ultimately 10% or 30% of households very much depends on how much capital is available to invest in those networks. And how good the performance will be remains to be seen – after all the 13% of adults who are smartphone only internet users are mostly doing it for cost reasons and “often encounter difficulties like accessing and reading content, as well as trouble submitting files and documents.”

But that’s not my primary focus here. One point made by net neutrality proponents such as Barbara van Schewick is that for the last 20 years, the regulation of telecom networks has been backed by both Republican and Democrat administrations and so the current proposal is a radical change in precedent. You can argue with the truth of that prediction, depending on whether you think the FTC will actively enforce antitrust law to deal with future net neutrality problems, but what is interesting to me is that many of the actions cited by van Schewick were taken to support content providers like Netflix or Google when those companies had a lot less power than they do today.

Some of those actions had significant costs, such as (Republican FCC chairman) Kevin Martin’s decision to attach “lifetime net neutrality conditions to parts of the 4G spectrum that [the FCC] auctioned off in 2008″. That action was taken at the behest of Google, but the result was that Verizon acquired 22MHz of upper C-block spectrum for only $0.76/MHzPOP, a 41% discount to the average price in the auction, and a more than 70% discount to the price paid (mainly by AT&T) for the lower B-block. Thus Google’s “net neutrality” lobbying effort potentially cost the government somewhere between $5B and $10B in lost auction proceeds, without having any substantial impact on the wireless services you receive today (are you more likely to choose Verizon because some of its spectrum comes with “open access” conditions?).

Of course net neutrality has not been the only area where Silicon Valley companies have sought or obtained favorable regulatory treatment compared to telcos and cable companies. The last Commission’s set top box proceeding and proposed privacy regulations were both seen as favoring Google, Amazon and Netflix over Verizon and Comcast. The current Commission is tilting the playing field back towards access providers by abandoning these efforts and dismantling the net neutrality rules, and opponents argue that it is going too far, because of the lack of competition in access provision and because they don’t trust the wolves at Comcast, Verizon and AT&T.

But if its now a debate about whether you can trust businesses in general to behave reasonably, can you trust Silicon Valley companies any more than ISPs? Do Google and Netflix need regulatory advantages over ISPs now they are so powerful? Are ISPs any more of a monopoly than Google or Facebook or Twitter, and which of them are more likely to be disrupted in the future? Those are the questions that are now being raised, most explicitly in Chairman Pai’s speech yesterday, where he noted that:

“despite all the talk about the fear that broadband providers could decide what Internet content consumers can see, recent experience shows that so-called edge providers are in fact deciding what content they see. These providers routinely block or discriminate against content they don’t like
…
Nonetheless, these companies want to place much tougher regulations on broadband providers than they are willing to have placed upon themselves. So let’s be clear. They might cloak their advocacy in the public interest, but the real interest of these Internet giants is in using the regulatory process to cement their dominance in the Internet economy.
And here’s the thing: I don’t blame them for trying. But the government shouldn’t aid and abet this effort. We have no business picking winners and losers in the marketplace. A level playing field, not regulatory arbitrage, is what best serves consumers and competition.”

10.16.17

Last week, Fierce Wireless reminded everyone that LightSquared was “one of the 10 worst telecom business moves of the last 10 years.” But now it may be time to consider if Ligado is going to appear on a similar list in a few years time.

On October 10, Brad Parkinson of the PNT Advisory Board invited Doug Smith, CEO of Ligado, to present to them at the meeting in Redondo Beach, CA on November 15. The letter advised Smith to “specifically describe your implementation plan, with a corresponding test plan addressing the issues we have openly raised” noting that “without these specific technical details and corresponding evaluations, we can only conjecture as to what you are really proposing.”

Parkinson’s letter also refers obliquely to Smith’s letter of July 6, noting that “from its tone, it is clear we still have several communications difficulties.” That’s quite an understatement, given that the July 6 letter accuses Parkinson of “willful blindness” about the specific details of Ligado’s public proposal and complains vehemently that the Board gave a “platform to Iridium’s unfounded and irrelevant concerns.”

Ligado has little alternative but to accept the invitation (and I’m told it already has), but the sub-text here is that the PNT Advisory Board meeting is full of technical experts who will undoubtedly be able to pick apart Ligado’s assertions (as stated to the FCC in June 2017) that a “consensus of industry and scientific opinion” backs Ligado’s proposal.

Indeed, the PNT Advisory Board has already advised the Executive Committee (chaired by the DoT and DoD) in July that Ligado’s “current proposal is fundamentally the same as the proposal tested in 2011″ and so the government faces a choice between:

1) Protect current and evolving uses of GPS, military and civilian, as a matter of national priority,
or
2) Approve high power terrestrial mobile broadband application in frequency bands adjacent to the GPS that would very likely cause harmful interference to both government and private sector GPS applications.

Ligado has been claiming to investors that it has Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao onside and she will overrule the concerns of the DoT engineers, as well as suggesting that the nominee for NTIA Administrator David Redl is a firm supporter of freeing up this spectrum. Nevertheless, last time around LightSquared’s political backers ran for cover at the first sign of trouble and there are other voices in government, such as Scott Pace at the National Space Council, who have taken a very different position in the past.

Ironically enough, I think there could be viable technical solutions to most of these problems, such as Ligado offering to buy back or repair all affected GPS receivers, which would be cheap compared to the more than $500M of interest that the company is accruing each year on its outstanding debt. However, Ligado once again appears more interested in political lobbying efforts to obtain approval, and opponents are again using the possibility of catastrophic outcomes to block that. So just as in 2011-12, Ligado now appears likely to drown in the political swamp that it has created.

10.03.17

That’s one question raised by a September 29 letter to the FCC from Senators Cory Booker and Dan Sullivan, expressing concern for the “growing challenge presented by low-Earth orbit (LEO) space debris” and asking Chairman Pai to coordinate with NASA and the FAA to “establish an interagency working group on space debris and to develop a comprehensive domestic policy on space debris mitigation”.

The letter focuses primarily on collisions between satellites and other in-orbit debris, such as the Iridium 33 incident in 2009, but the FCC also has concerns about debris falling to Earth as highlighted in the Dilbert cartoon. SpaceX has now submitted proposals for both a 4425 satellite LEO constellation and a 7518 satellite VLEO (very low Earth orbit) constellation, and when the FCC assessed SpaceX’s proposal, it calculated a worst case “aggregate casualty risk from components that survive atmospheric re-entry as roughly 1 in 4 for the 7,518 satellite deployment described in the application, assuming no replenishment” and a risk of “roughly 1 in 5 for the 4,425 satellite deployment“.

SpaceX’s application indicates that there will be five or six components on each VLEO satellite which would survive re-entry with a kinetic energy of at least 960 Joules (equivalent to a 5lb brick traveling at 65mph) and its response to the FCC’s query, stating that “individual vehicle risks rang[e] from 1:17,400 to 1:31,200″, is not exactly encouraging when there are intended to be 12,000 satellites in the constellation.

Indeed, although Elon apparently has only Non-GAAP “adjusted” hair rather than pointy hair, SpaceX’s proposed mitigation measure was similar to that in the Dilbert cartoon, suggesting that (rather than aiming for cities that have lots of swimming pools) the Commission take into account “the degree to which people would be located within structures that would provide shelter from potential impact”.

With concern now being expressed from Congress as well as within the FCC, it will therefore be interesting to see what happens next, and in particular whether this impacts the approval process, including the two draft orders that were circulated by Chairman Pai last week to “grant U.S. market access to two more NGSO systems in the Ku- and Ka- spectrum bands”. I had assumed these orders would be for SpaceX and Telesat, due to those companies’ intention to launch test satellites later this year, but according to Communications Daily, the orders are in fact to approve Space Norway and Telesat, leaving SpaceX out in the cold.

09.15.17

This week in Paris all seemed calm, after the turbulence of the last few years, with the only major announcement coming from SES with its new O3b mPower MEO constellation. But under the surface a lot is happening, and (perhaps appropriately) I think we are now just in the eye of the hurricane, and the storm will shortly ramp up once again, before we find out who and what will be left standing in a couple of years time.

SES’s announcement came several months after it selected Boeing to build the O3b NEXT constellation (the “development agreement” was announced in July as part of SES’s half year results) and the delay until now appears to have been due to SES waiting for an anchor tenant that never materialized. In fact I believe SES originally expected to announce the contract in May, as was hinted at when SES’s CEO said he was “too busy” to go to Satellite 2017). However, SES is clearly not willing to see OneWeb, ViaSat and Inmarsat take the lead in new data-oriented satellite systems, whether or not it secures a major anchor tenant for this system.

Another subject of much debate is what Panasonic will decide to do now its original plan to invest in dedicated XTS satellites appears to be dead. Panasonic wants to lay off much more of the risk on a satellite operator, rather than underwriting the satellite costs in full, as Thales did with SES-17. Will an FSS operator be prepared to take this risk, bearing in mind that Intelsat is short of money, SES is now building O3b NEXT (which won’t be well suited for high latitude aero operations) and Eutelsat is intending to partner with ViaSat? Or would Panasonic do something more radical and let a rival like Inmarsat take over provision of connectivity services?

Finally, Inmarsat seems to be under a lot of pressure after a 15% decline in its share price in the last two weeks, and some were speculating that recent personnel changes were connected to this uncertain outlook. Profitability of aero contracts (notably that with Lufthansa) remains a major concern, and issues remain to be resolved for the EAN air-to-ground network, especially if Inmarsat is forced to provide a more robust satellite link in the wake of ViaSat’s legal challenge.

All of these issues provide much food for thought, and could lead to significant realignments in the industry over the next year. Decisions affecting the inflight connectivity market are almost certain to occur, because Panasonic can’t wait too long to provide clarity on its future positioning, and so we had better batten down the hatches for the coming winds of change.